William Plomer

William Charles Franklyn Plomer (10 December 1903 – 21 September 1973) was a South African poet, novelist and campaigner for racial equality. He also wrote the librettos for four of Benjamin Britten’s operas. He wrote some of his poetry under the pseudonym Robert Pagan.

Quotes

• We hear a great deal about sex nowadays; it is possible to overestimate its importance, because there are always people who pay it little attention or who apparently manage, like Sir Isaac Newton, to get along, without giving it a thought.
  • "The Child of Queen Victoria", § 1, in The Child of Queen Victoria, and Other Stories (London: Jonathan Cape, 1933).

• Who strolls so late, for mugs a bait,
  In the mists of Maida Vale,
  Sauntering past a stucco gate
  Fallen, but hardly frail?
  • "French Lisette", st. 1, in Poems from New Writing (London: John Lehmann, 1946), p. 39

• The commonplace needs no defence,
  Dullness is in the critic’s eyes,
  Without a licence life evolves
  From some dim phase its own surprise;
  Under these yellow-twinkling elms,
  Behind these hedges trimly shorn,
  As in a stable once, so here
  It may be born, it may be born.
  • "The Bungalows", line 45, in A Shot in the Park (London: Jonathan Cape, 1955).

• It's so utterly out of the world!
  So fearfully wide of the mark!
  A Robinson Crusoe existence will pall
  On that unexplored side of the Park —
  Not a soul will be likely to call!
  • "A Shot in the Park", st. 6, in Boderline Ballads (New York: The Noonday Press, 1955), p. 76.

• Out of that bungled, unwise war
  An alp of unforgiveness grew.
  • "The Boer War", st. 4, in Collected Poems (1960), p. 20.

• On a sofa upholstered in panther skin
  Mona did researches in original sin.
  • "Mews Flat Mona: A Memory of the 'Twenties", st. 6, in Collected Poems (1960), p. 116.

The Dorking Thigh, and Other Satires

Quotations are cited from the first edition (London: Jonathan Cape, 1945).

• A family portrait not too stale to record
  Of a pleasant old buffer, nephew to a lord,
  Who believed that the bank was mightier than the sword,
  And that an umbrella might pacify barbarians abroad:
  Just like an old liberal
  Between the wars.
  • "Father and Son: 1939", line 1.

• Oh, the twenties and the thirties were not otherwise designed
  Than other times when blind men into ditches led the blind,
  When the rich mouse ate the cheese and the poor mouse got the rind,
  And man, the self-destroyer, was not lucid in his mind.
  • "Father and Son: 1939", line 73.

• With first-rate sherry flowing into second-rate whores,
  And third-rate conversation without one single pause:
  Just like a young couple
  Between the wars.
  • "Father and Son: 1939".

• A pleasant old duffer, nephew to a lord,
  Who believed that the bank was mightier than the sword,
  And that an umbrella might pacify barbarians abroad:
  Just like an old liberal
  Between the wars.
  • "Father and Son: 1939".

• When her guests were awash with champagne and with gin
  She was recklessly sober, as sharp as a pin:
  An abstemious man would reel at her look
  As she rolled a bright eye and praised his last book.
  • "Slightly Foxed", line 25.

• A rose-red sissy half as old as time.
  • "Playboy of the Demi-World: 1938".
  • See John Burgon's line on Petra.

• 'Look who's here!
  Do come and help us fiddle while Rome burns!'
  • "Playboy of the Demi-World: 1938".

• So never say to D'Arcy, 'Be your age!' —
  He'd shrivel up at once or turn to stone.
  • "Playboy of the Demi-World: 1938".

• Brzeska and Brooke were among those she knew
  And she lived long enough to meet Lawrences, too,
  D. H. and T. E. – she who'd known R. L. S.,
  Talked to Hardy of Kim, and to Kipling of Tess!
  • "Slightly Foxed", line 33.

Quotes about Plomer

• His most celebrated poems are, of course, the historical-satirical ballads (A or even X certificate) in which a person or period is "hit off", in the sense both of being preserved and hit for six.
  • Philip Larkin, in The Guardian, June 10, 1960.

• His poetry may be divided into comic extravaganza on the one hand, and more personal work on the other. There is no one like him in the world in the former genre; as a "light poet" he is preferable to John Betjeman – as fluent in traditional forms, his work is never vitiated by refuge in the poetical or high sentimental, and his choice of words is subtler, funnier and altogether sharper. In his other vein Plomer is fastidious, reticent, elegant and the author of some memorable and moving lines.
  • Martin Seymour-Smith Guide to Modern World Literature (London: Hodder & Stoughton, [1973] 1975) vol. 1, p. 389.